Van Leeuwen Cranberry Crumble Ice Cream

[New for Fall 2023] Ok, the new Van Leeuwen lineup is supposed to be out today which means that I actually saw this particular flavor discounted to $3.48 this morning. I bought my pint weeks ago, but maybe I should have bought another pint? Let's find out.

Van Leeuwen Cranberry Crumble Ice Cream

cream cheese ice cream, oat crumble and swirls of cranberry

I see an S, does that mean it will be super?

I miss scooping and typing, so let's do that today.

Hmmmm, I'm not sure what to make of this. I have expected to be bowled over by cranberry flavoring, but instead that flavor is lurking in the crumble.... whoa, just got a burst of cranberry. Apparently it was attempting a sneak attack on my taste buds.

It's busy enough!

Yeah, the cranberry has kicked on for sure now while the crumble continues to be present. I've decided to scoop from the sides for a bit to reset.

The crumble bits are small but plentiful. Their flavoring is definitely reminiscent of  an oatmeal cookies. I believe that's a good thing, at least for the most part.

And back to that potent swirl again. One of their other flavors had this issue before with a flavorful swirl and I wound up not truly enjoying that flavor until I smushed it all together and made the flavor much more uniform.

Alright, I'm going to say I like this one, but it's definitely a bit off the beaten path. It's like an oatmeal cookie dunked in to cranberry flavored milk. Granted I've never had cranberry flavored milk, but I'm guessing it tastes like this. 

In other words, I would take this review (and half eaten pint) as an endorsement but with the caveat that sometimes the cranberry swirl can be a little bit jarring ---- wait, wait, wait. I just read the description again. The cream cheese base combining with the cranberry swirl totally explains that flavor pop that was catching me off-guard. 

What can I say, I bought this pint 6 weeks ago and didn't bother to re-read the description until after I dug in today. I am glad they went with the cream cheese base because it adds complexity and makes it that much easier to keep scooping.

So yeah, different but interesting.

On Second Scoop: I wanted to smush this flavor, so I did! I wound up making the cranberry pop even more without actually increasing the overall cranberry flavor. Does that make sense? It was a bit much for me so I wound up making a 50/50 mix of this and some Tillamook White Chocolate Raspberry ice cream. The result was still pretty potent. I liked it more or less, but didn't love it. Maybe I should have mixed it with the Strawberry Tillamook instead.

Verdict?  always different, sometimes potent
Buy Again?  I'll need to sleep on this...